The Secret Weapon of Leadership - Trusting Your Gut
The Secret Weapon of Leadership - Trusting Your Gut
Often termed as intuition, gut feel, or a sixth sense, many perceive it as mere superstition. Yet, it's truly a potent instinct about decisions, an invaluable tool in the business leader's toolkit – the Gut Feel.
The legendary Warren Buffett once remarked, "Always follow your gut." Such wisdom has been echoed by sports stars like LeBron James and many successful CEOs. This intrinsic feeling is integral yet underutilised in many corporate environments.
Many argue that the value of gut feeling only shines when someone has endured multiple business cycles or has accumulated ample experience. While there's some truth in this, many successful business leaders have attributed their strategic decisions, including market entries, to their gut feeling.
Business leaders should introspect:
How frequently are you channelling your intuition?
To what extent is your leadership team using their intuition?
Why Trusting Your Gut is Pivotal
The Cambridge Dictionary describes Gut Feel as a belief about something not primarily based on reasoning. Yet, in many corporate cultures, fear inhibits leaders. The dread of making mistakes and the subsequent blame, shame, criticism, and job insecurity prevails, pushing people to over-rely on data and facts.
However, the value of gut feeling is undeniable:
Speed and Agility: As businesses grow, bureaucracy can slow down decision-making. A gut feeling can often provide answers swiftly, ensuring the business remains nimble.
Muscle Memory: The more you trust your gut, the better you become at it. It's a skill that strengthens with use.
Team Engagement: Tapping into your team's intuition can yield insights, unearthing potential blind spots, encouraging creativity, and challenging a culture of fear.
Counteracting Data: Gut feelings can sometimes counteract what the data suggests. For instance, in a case we observed, metrics suggested high equipment utilisation. However, a CEO's gut feeling prompted a deeper look, revealing the metrics were flawed.
The importance of gut feel does not negate the value of data. Both are essential. As Jim Collins suggests, it's about the "power of the ‘and’.” Utilising both data AND intuition is the ideal approach.
A Call to Action for Business Leaders
We urge business leaders to recognise and elevate the use of gut feeling in decision-making. While data-driven decisions are crucial, there's significant value in trusting one's instincts. By combining these together with customer and employee feedback, we believe businesses can optimise growth, enhancing their edge over competitors.
Trusting your gut might just be the missing piece in your leadership puzzle.
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Hello, I’m Adam. I believe that we can create incredible companies everywhere, by replacing the fear, doubt, and insecurity typically held AND conveyed by leaders, with authenticity, excitement, deep fulfilment, and an abundance mindset.
Having worked in corporate for over 20 years and made major contributions to some huge successes. I always felt that something was missing…I wasn’t living in line with my purpose.
Visage Growth Partners was born to help others achieve their dreams, the ultimate “pay-it forward”. We help others in order that they can make incredible contributions in their lives and the lives of others - and it’s the most personally and professionally fulfilling life we could lead.
At Visage Growth Partners, we believe a business cannot grow beyond the level of the leadership capability. Whilst we can help you grow your business strategically and operationally, we know that real growth comes from igniting the collective power of your leadership team and empowering the team to work together and inspire real success professionally as well as personally.
It is the magical blend of extensive industry experiences, access to world’s best practices in business growth methodologies, and the ability to engage and support senior leadership teams that has Visage Growth Partners deliver exceptional results for our clients. I look forward to meeting you and hearing more about you and your business and how we can clear the pathway to successful growth for you and your business.